Limerence
by Gray Glube
Summary: He's never had the type of luck someone would consider the good kind.
1. Chapter 1

**Author: **grayglube

**Title: **Limerence

**Summary: **He's never had the type of luck someone would consider the good kind.

**Rating:** M

**Warning(s)/Kink(s): **Language, sexual situations, violence, drug use, dub-con

**Disclaimer: **I don't own American Horror Story.

**A/N:** This is an AU. It starts off kind of sweet and nice in a teenager who talks shit kind of way and then it becomes a not so pleasant sort of thing. Been toying with this for awhile like since **paceyourself** started 'About a Girl' which was awhile ago (and she really needs to fucking update that shit before I shank someone). Takes place in moderen day except for when otherwise specified.

* * *

He's nursing the sure to bloom bruise right above his elbow, courtesy of a stair banister that like the rest of the house does nothing but become a fixture of his constant spite and distaste, when he sees her.

There's a general sort of curiosity, the type of curiosity beget by coming across a stranger in one's domicile, but by no means does that equate to even the barest amount of simmering and simpering attraction.

Even then he's not quite surprised by it, he's used to the budding starlet, or the twenty years later version, flopped, burned-out craggy space rumble versions of girls who start out thinking they shine like super novas and cosmic events on the pages of a sears catalog or tampon commercial, standing around going through pseudo improvisation or accent work with his mother in the den, which is really just a pompous middle-class with money way of saying it's much nicer and has more expensive furniture than a normal living room.

He'd heard someone else and their horrid version of an eastern European accent all the way from the upstairs bathroom, something he's especially surly about since it threw him out of a particularly raunchy mid-shower fantasy of Westfield's girls' swim team and into one of communist Russia where girls don't so much try to eat each other out through one piece bathing suits because they're frantic with post-championship win lust as eat dead dog next to a burning car because communist Russia isn't so big on FDA guidelines.

But whoever has come today for an acting session, lesson, exercise in futile and long since gone dreams and missed chances of being the next piece of twenty something riding a motorcycle through fire while giant robots destroy cityscapes or have fake fuck scenes with Hollywood's gay in real life A-list man of the week while having blown the producer and five to ten of his closest friends to get that far, has made him curious as to who the fuck she is.

Or thinks she is.

Because she's going through his forsaken messenger bag with flippant bored ease while his mother tries to seduce the mid-twenties hedge trimmer next door with saddlebag tits and the hair-do of an "I Love Lucy" set extra.

"Can I help you?"

"Sorry."

She doesn't sound very sorry.

"It's fine."

He grabs his bag anyway and flings it onto the sofa; it makes it over the top but flops loudly to the floor since he's overshot the distance.

With a thoughtful look out the open French doors he takes in his mother all but fondling the twenty-something gardener, "She's going to be awhile."

"So would I, he's pretty hot."

He raises a brow but the girl doesn't see it, she's busy giving the scene outside a cursory once over.

"Do you think she'd care if I smoke?" There's a cigarette twirling between her fingers already and he watches her turn it over her knuckles. She's mousy in her oversized cardigan and ashy blonde hair hanging loose and lackluster around her face.

"That's what the ashtray is for."

He waves a hand at the crystal dish sitting on the coffee table between the faux velvet covered armchairs nestled cozily in front of the fire place as if set there for a happily married aging duo, it's where his mother get blitzed at night and passes out until a flaming log pops and the embers singe her slippers.

"I thought it was a candy dish," her hands are small and delicate; they look like hands that wouldn't be able to handle the weight of heavy glass ashtrays.

"Is it?"

"I don't know it looks like one."

He picks an almost empty tea cup from the table, "Here."

"What am I supposed to do with this?" She looks at it like she's thoroughly perplexed.

"Ash in it."

She points at the candy dish she's set back down, "But that's an ashtray."

"What if it's a candy dish?"

She sighs happily and takes the tea cup and lights a match, "Oh, yeah. Thanks."

The first drag wafts out of her mouth, "I'm Violet."

"I heard." His mother has a loud mouth.

"I'm Tate."

"I know, I saw," her grin is wolfish as she casts a glance at his school bag. "Want one?"

He waves away her proffered pack of Marlboro reds, "I don't smoke."

It's a lie but he doesn't make it a point to smoke with noisy girls he's just met in the middle of his house.

Violet shrugs and flings herself into one of the chairs, smoking leisurely and ashing into the candy dish instead of the tea cup as if she's forgotten what they had just been talking about.

"Just you and your mom?" She asks while he picks his bag up off the floor on the other side of the room, he can only glimpse half of her face but it's turned towards the empty fireplace.

"Yeah. Why?"

"It's just a big house. You guys rich or something?" She looks at him and her gaze is like jagged glass.

"Why would we be rich?"

"Well what's a place like this go for?" She waves the hand holding her cigarette and smoke spirals up towards the ceiling in wafting curlicues. "I mean it's what? Four, five bedroom, two and a half or three bath, attic, basement, kitchen and dining room plus a study, pretty non-ethnic school district plus the private schools, iron front gate, back yard with an in-ground. That's at least seven hundred and fifty to one point five, ya know? And if it's just your mom…-"

He grinds his teeth at the thought of how they could afford the house in the first place, "Yeah, we're rich." His waspish tone is what makes her mouth click shut and cuts off what she was going to say and replaces it with, "…sorry, I didn't mean to come off like a cunt."

"…yeah, maybe you shouldn't be noisy."

"Maybe. Sorry."

Again, she looks anything but.

"Yeah." He stomps upstairs with his bag slung over his shoulder.

She goes back to practicing her accents, loudly, making it impossible to resume his masturbatory exploits, he sighs heavily and pinches the bridge of his nose to counter the just about to bloom migraine brought on by the swelling rage he's experiencing.

* * *

He's pushes the cart along one handed while his mother waits in line to order cold cuts or rather 'coal cuts' since she's kept her obnoxious accent developed from a life spent growing up in the nice part of the South that keeps it's racism and bigotry under the rug and in the closet under the stairs right next to the mongoloid babies and whores for daughters.

Meandering down the aisles he eyes a girl buying tampons half-heartedly, mostly for the cheerleading uniform, knowing that she's the type of girl who'll get fat after she gets married, knocked-up and goes Suzie homemaker after highschool or during, whenever.

He watches her spot him and try to covertly put back her Extra Super size and go for Regular but the damage is done and he wonders if there's that big of a difference, he could care less how big a girl's pussy is, it's pussy and he's a boy.

Another aisle and he tosses in bread, remembering that it goes in the spot where you put a toddler and not in the actual cart. His mother flips like a switch over the little things like that and he does not need her hissed bitchiness today.

School was shit.

Doesn't matter what state he's in it blows no matter what. It's a Wednesday and that mean two more days until he can sleep all fucking day if he wants, not that it means he'll be able to but he'll make damn sure to try.

There's the tell-tale click of heels coming closer and he pretends not to hear so he can push the cart faster to make his mother try to catch up.

* * *

She's back.

Smoking outside, like she's been there waiting. He doesn't know where the idea comes from but it's unsettling.

"Hey."

"Oh, hi," she smirks like she hadn't seen him come through the gate. There's silence in which she smokes and he wonders if he should reach into his bag for his house-keys and let her in or stand around by the back door with her instead while trying to make small talk.

"I was kind if a prick," he settles for when she keeps staring in his general direction.

"I noticed."

"So,..sorry." It sounds like a question. She shrugs and leans her elbows on the low brick wall.

"Yeah yeah. It's fine. Really."

She takes a drag, "Just figured you know? What does this acting class thing really bring in?" She shoots him a 'come on, that's bullshit' look. "And your mom's kind of old money southern charm and…"

"Prejudges."

"I was going to say delicacies."

He snorted.

"But yeah, your's might work better."

"Can I bum a smoke?"

"Thought you didn't."

And she grins like she knew all along he was lying.

"I didn't really feel like talking and smoking with someone the other day."

"Okay."

She thumbs one out and holds it out to him.

"You go to Westfield?" He mumbles around the filter while enclosing the flame she flicks up from her bic to light his cigarette."

"No. Marlborough."

"Is that where they send the bad kids or something?"

"Do I look like a bad kid?" Her eyes widen and her smile dances across her mouth.

He shrugs, "Why not?"

"Thanks. Prep school. Uniforms and everything."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Where is it?"

She's wearing another too big sweater and plum colored tight with camel saddle shoes.

"Like I'd wear my schoolgirl outfit out of school."

"Yeah, creepy dudes love that shit."

"It's nothing to get a woody over, trust me. It's not like totally errrraaaawwwtic and bodaaaaaycious dude."

"People talk like that here?"

"In the movies they do."

"Is that what you want to do?"

Her eyes roll and he knows the answer is no and what the truth is, is that her parents probably paid for classes and sent her over to his mother so she wouldn't get into trouble. She seems like trouble.

"Why'd you guys move here?"

"My sister died."

"Really?"

"Yeah, last Halloween. Hit and run."

"Shit."

"Yeah. So my mom settled out of court and we bought a fucking California dream house. It's blood money and she acts like it's the best thing that ever happened to us."

"Brutal."

"Yeah," he laughs a little laugh and drops his smoke, grinding it out before blowing out the last drag and running a hand through his hair roughly, "fuck."

"Condolences."

"Thanks."

"See ya later."

"Yeah," she says coolly while he walks inside and she waits for his mother to show up for lessons.

* * *

He makes the mistake of snickering a little too loudly.

The kid in the next row with the stupid answer turns to scowl at him.

He just shakes his head back jauntily and condescendingly right back at him.

"Okay so Kyle doesn't know. Who's Tate again?"

"Me."

"Can you give me an example of appeasement?"

"The start of world war two." It comes out a little snide but someone laughs quietly from behind him.

"Which was?" His constipated looking teacher waits with an expression of impatience and attitude. It makes him want to hit her with the fucking textbook.

"Chamberlain gave Austria to Hitler because socialism was becoming an issue and he didn't really have a choice."

"And then what happened."

"Germany invaded Poland and Britain replaced Chamberlain with Winston Churchill and the whole world went to war."

"Good. You read the book."

"Yup," he goes back to tapping his pencil rapidly against the pages of his chapter on 'global tensions rising' and set to erasing the dick someone's doodled on page 507.

Ignoring that there's a whole classroom staring at him like he's an asshole for knowing how to read and remember it for more than five minutes.

* * *

"Is she supposed to be here right now?"

The girl who has become an almost daily fixture in his life is spread out on the couch with her boots hanging over the edge and her stare fixed to the ceiling and her lips around the filter of one of her cigarettes.

Sh's ashing into what did indeed turn out to be a candy dish.

"Is it between four and six?"

He smirks a little with good humor, "She's probably out with the pool boy."

"Don't blame her, he's…-"

"Pretty hot, yeah. So I've heard."

She props herself up on her elbows and takes him in with her eyes, "Hot and dumb what else could a girl want?"

Her eyebrows rise and fall suggestively, that paired with the cigarette bobbing up and down between her lips makes his grin broaden.

"You met him?"

"No, but he's a pool boy."

She turns her face to blow out smoke.

"You gonna wait for her?"

"I guess. I don't have anything else to do," she flops back and goes back to staring at the ceiling.

He isn't sure what makes him say it but the words are out into the room just waiting for a response, "Wanna see the rest of the house?"

He guesses it's because he's starved for human contact and the upstairs sanctuary of his bedroom seems small and claustrophobic.

"Really?" Her eyes light up with genuine excitement, like she's been waiting for the offer for forever. He shrugs, "Sure."

"Murderhouse tour for real, cah-ul."

"Murderhouse tour?"

"Uh, yeah. Cause you're giving me a tour and this is the Murderhouse."

"What?"

"You know right?"

He doesn't and it looks like it amuses her immensely.

"Know what? Did somebody die here or something?"

"Uh…yeah." Her eyes move comically and he doesn't find the look she gives him irritating at all, surprisingly.

"How do you know?"

"I took the bus tour a few years ago. For a birthday thing."

"Bus tour?"

"Yeah, 'Eternal Darkness', it goes around L.A. and hits all the spots of big murders and stuff."

"Who died here?"

"Um…," she ticks off the death toll on her non-smoking hand, "the abortionist and his wife and all the little dead babies, the sorority nurses, the found a body of a maid who used to work her when they put in the pool and the mystery family."

"Who's the mystery family?"

She's bent up with her back arched forward and her knees pushed into her chest with her elbows crossed over them and her heels still banging into the side of the cough under the arm, "There was a family a few years ago where somebody went crazy and because the case is still open they can't publish the name in the paper because there's a whole civil suit thing going on or something because of whatever, I took the tour before that though so I don't really know the details."

"Maybe we should take it and find out."

It sounds like an offer. He realizes. He wants to smack himself in the mouth. Her eyebrows shoot up and relax just as quick, "Maybe you should show me the abortion basement tour guide."

"Okay."

She hops off the couch and follows close enough behind that he can feel her body heat through his t-shirt.

* * *

"Nice room. Very…clean."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

She eyes his posters before turning to grin at him over her shoulder, "Cobain and Gaiman huh? Not bad, not bad."

"You know Neil Gaiman?" He asks because girls don't really read comics. She scoffs.

"Yeah, I know Neil Gaiman." She says the name like she's imitating him but he knows he didn't say it like that. "I like his short stories better though, he's got that vibe to him. Though Thessaly in Sandman is probably the most kick-ass chick in comics since Catwoman."

"Catwoman never cut someone's face off."

She grins, "The first lesson is: you don't fuck with Thessaly, you don't get another lesson." She shakes her head menacingly and giggles. It sounds good.

The conversation spins into favorite characters (his: the eyeball stealing serial killer nightmare creation, pumpkin headed handyman, and an immortal bag lady and hers: a half skeleton faced she-demon from hell and a witch who nails the face she cuts off of someone to a wall and makes talk to her), H.P. Lovecraft's fictional towns inhabited by frog people waiting to bring forth the end of the world via underwater sea monster, and short stories about a never aging model in porn magazines, all the animals in the world disappearing which leads humanity to use babies as a source of outwear leather and burgers, a reimagining of Beowulf for the modern age based off Bay Watch and another off of Gaiman's 'American Gods,' a fireplace story circle with the months of the year personified, and the three fates motif.

They lay out on his bed puff puff passing a joint he's offered her half of until the rumble of his mother's station wagon over the gravel of the driveway floats in through the open window.

"I think that's her," he groans.

"You think I should go?" She's propped up on an elbow and licks her dry, cracked lips shiny with spit.

"Why?"

She waves a hand flippantly, "Well she's way too late for our class and she might think since I stayed and I'm upstairs that I was blowing you or something. I get that vibe from her."

"What vibe?" His eyes crinkle.

"Momma Bear vibe and the 'I think you're a harlot' vibe."

"What are you going to do then, sneak out the window so my mother who was probably sucking pool boy cock doesn't think I was busy defiling you for the last two hours?"

He leans in a little just to see if she'll lean away, cowed by his presence, thrown off by his altogether 'I'm a boy and have a penis and could defile you if I wanted to' vibe.

She leans in and he can smell the smoke on her breath, "If anyone would be getting defiled it'd be you golden boy and, yes, out the window it is. See ya."

"Hey," he reaches slowly like he can still grab her arm to corral her back to her forsaken post next to him. He doesn't want her to go yet.

"Too late, already on the roof."

"If she's too busy sucking pool boy cock on Thursday we'll talk angry angsty grunge bands, okay?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Cool."

But she's already gone and his mother is climbing up the stairs.

* * *

He wonders what it is about certain words that turns his skin hot and his jeans hug his crotch.

Blowing.

Harlot.

Defile.

Cock.

A few more and he could try to write a Setsuna.

Maybe it's because she's a girl.

Maybe it's because she's a girl who was in his room.

Maybe it's because she's a girl who was in his room that knows her cult graphic novels and appreciates Nirvana.

He doesn't know if he's been looking close enough to tell if she's attractive or not, he's been too annoyed with her questions once and too concerned with showing what he knows about his favorite author the other time, and he hopes the next time she shows up he can pass off what's going to be no less than a thorough cursory glance at all the areas girls hate boys staring at and what most likely, if caught, will come off more like he's eye fucking her, which he acknowledges will be altogether too aggravatingly annoying if he doesn't find her attractive at all.

* * *

**A/N:** Don't know when the next chapter will be up. Bear with me.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author: **grayglube

**Title: **Limerence

**Summary: **He's never had the type of luck someone would consider the good kind.

**Rating:** M

**Warning(s)/Kink(s): **Language, sexual situations, violence, drug use, dub-con, violence, self-mutilation

**Disclaimer: **I don't own American Horror Story.

**A/N:** Anybody need some sexual tension in their lives? Because I wrote some. Also you get some dead breakfast club that is not dead nor a club, it's AU for a reason right? You will also see other characters later on but not in the way you expect. For reference the last chapter takes place about the first two weeks of September, this one takes place over the last two.

* * *

He's changing for practice when the kid who owns the locker on the floor in the next column unseals a Ziploc filled with little white pills.

"ADD?"

"What?"

The kid, lanky and greasy haired throws the small plastic bag back into his locker.

"Attention deficit disorder," he answers tugging on his track tank and shutting the metal door, forgetting that he still has to put his running sneakers on, he curses under his breath and redoes his combination.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"It's what Ritalin is for," he tells the other boy, still perched on the ground by his own open locker, while he slips off his Converse and ties on his Nikes.

"Oh. Shit."

"Don't worry."

The kid still looks wary even after Tate rolls his eyes and waves away the fact that the kid likes to swallow down the equivalent of legal speed.

"If you're looking for someone, I don't sell. Well..., weed but nothing heavy."

"No?" He's a little disappointed, he's always looking for someone to provide something to take the edge off.

"Yeah, Kyle does. Nothing wild though. I can hook you up if you want."

"Yeah?"

The kid nods. "I'm Kevin."

"Tate."

Kevin turns to put his back against the lockers and draws up a knee to tie his own shoe, "You sell?" He asks not looking up from his laces.

"Nah."

"Oh, too bad. Competitory prices would be nice."

"Thanks for the economics lesson," Tate smirks and Kevin kicks at his foot with a grin.

* * *

It's hot out, for September, on the track. He's trying to get his six minute mile down to a five before the end of the month. He hasn't run since last year. Kevin plops down next to him on the grass while he's stretching, he can smell the unwashed boy reek of him and suppresses a visible cringe.

"That's him, over there. With the girl," Kevin points over the metal bleachers on the other side of the football field encompassing track.

"Kyle?" Even from far away he can tell it's the same Kyle who's in World History with him. It's the easy slouch and shoulders swathed by the leather and canvas of his Westfield Wolverines football jacket.

They sit in separate rows but every so often they talk in order to borrow writing utensils or work on some fuckwit classroom activity having to do with document based question essay responses or end of the chapter long answers. The kid isn't dumb, just preoccupied with more important things to do, like fuck his girlfriend or whatever home/away game is happening afterschool.

"Yeah. He'll probably be around until his girlfriend finishes," he nods to the girls in gym apparel throwing each other up in the air and making long-limbed scantily clad pyramids.

A whistle blows and their heads swivel to their coach. He has them run suicides to build up endurance until someone vomits.

* * *

The once solitary boy on the bleachers isn't left so solitary anymore, there's a girl mimicking his straddle on the striated metal plank, Tate watches the boy cup the brunette's kneecaps and rock her legs back and forth, "Come on." He watches Kyle swoop in for a kiss that the girl turns away from with the shy smile girls get when boys start acting like all they want is a kiss, "Not here."

"Come on, babe. It's hot right?"

Tate rolls his eyes.

"_No_. Kyle."

"Please?"

"Later," the girl pushes Kyle back with a firm hand and finger wag.

"That's what you always say."

"I can't help it if my parents are always home."

"So come over to my house."

"…"

"Tonight, come over tonight."

"I have practice."

"Skip."

He can't help but feel bad for girls with boyfriends who beg like dogs sniffing at someone's crotch for a treat.

"I can't. Homecoming is in a two weeks."

"Fine."

"Hey. I'm sorry."

"No, you're not."

The banter is light and they're both smiling a little. The easy familiarity makes Tate frown with something that may be jealousy but he knows the girl's easy flirting will do nothing but infuriate her boyfriend after long enough because girls like her don't realize that boys like Kyle are cruel because it gets them what they want.

"Don't be such a creep about it."

"What? You're the one who needs it babe. I can wait, but you? You are just waiting for me to give it up."

"Oh yeah, I want it _sooooo_ bad baby."

"Say that again."

The girls smacks the Kyle on the arm and leans in for a kiss, mumbling afterwards against his lips that he's a creep, affectionately.

"I'm a creep?"

"Yeah."

Tate turns his back on their sloppy make-out session until Kyle speaks up again.

"You're dad's here."

"Shit. I'll text you later."

"Pictures?"

"Shut up." She prances down the bleachers with her ponytail swaying and her hips sashaying as Tate climbs up to where her boyfriend is leaning back and nursing some unresolved groin-related unease.

Tate sits down a ways down from the vacated spot, Kyle raises a brow.

"Heard you know how to score."

There's a pause and a hissed inhale, "Maybe."

"Listen let's not jerk each other off, do you or don't you?"

Kyle sighs, "Yeah. What are you looking for?"

"Coke."

"May take a little while and I don't do anything less than a hundred bucks."

"Alright. Three hundred. That's…"

"Yeah I know how much you get for three hundred," Kyle insists looking the slightest bit irritated.

"Don't fuck me man," Tate warns.

"Whatever," Kyle looks put-out, "give me until next week. I don't pass it off here though. Gimme your cell number. I'll text you."

Tate takes the proffered cellphone from Kyle and puts in his own number, resisting the urge to check to see if he's got any naked pictures saved in his photo album of his cheerleader girlfriend.

"Who'd you hear about me from anyway?" Kyle asks when Tate returns his phone.

"Kevin. Track team."

Kyle makes a sound of disbelief, "Fucking Gedman. He's got a big fucking mouth."

"Business is business."

"Yeah, but I try not to expand the circle too far," Kyle gives him a look that Tate understands immediately, "Gotcha."

"You're name's Tate, right?"

"Yeah."

"I'm Kyle."

"I heard," Tate waves a hand in the direction of the girls at the base of the bleachers.

"Yeah, I bet. _God_ she's so fucking _loud_ sometimes."

"Your girlfriend?"

"Well I wasn't talking to anyone else was I?"

Tate smirks. Kyle blows out another breath, "Fucking cheerleaders."

"The uniform ain't bad."

"Doesn't hurt." Kyle agrees tilting his head and looking at him, slowly like he's sizing him up, "You're not queer are you?"

"No."

"Whatever. Well don't wear your fucking shorts around man, makes you look like a faggot."

Getting up and pushing his fists down into the pockets of his hoodie he starts to walk back down to the track, "Whatever. Thanks."

"Hey!"

Tate swings his head back, "Yeah?"

"Cash before the weekend. Not in front of…"

Holding up a hand Tate rolls his eyes, "Done this before, know how it goes."

"Yeah…well, just making sure."

"Yup. See ya around."

"See ya."

* * *

"Nice look." It's a drawl from his right.

She's sprawled out on her back across the couch cushions, her jeans are slung long and loose across her pointy hip bones and her Nirvana tee has been cut open down the sides and tied closed on either side of her waist, her midriff is pale, bare, and unpierced. Her toenails are electric blue and lime green, one black flip-flop lies on the floor under her swinging feet hung over wooden sofa arm.

He can see the seat of her pants from the open space between it and the cushions. He finds it oddly erotic, because he can't help imagining her jeans were gone and if they were he'd be able to make out the shape of her little cunt from behind the thin cotton that be covering it.

"I run." He feels suddenly self-conscious of his jersey shorts, mostly because he's half-hard.

"From what?"

"Horny teenage boys."

"Me too."

He hides his pelvis behind the stair banister when her head pops up to grace him with one of her casual glances that feels intimate when it's given to him. He swallows with a tight throat, "Is she late again?"

She smiles, syrup slow and warm, "Nope, I'm early. She changed the time but I only got the message once I was knocking on the door."

"So, you let yourself in?" He grins because she makes it easy to do just that.

"I thought you'd be here and the door was unlocked, which is very unsafe, and it was either wait in here or out on the stoop."

"You can't snoop when you're out on the stoop," he insinuates despite being eager and pleased that she's hoped to see him.

"Scared I'd find something?" She taunts hefting herself up and siding towards him with only one flip-flop on.

He wipes the back of his hand across his dampened brow, "Like what?"

Swing hums and swings back and forth with a palm curved over the wooden ball on top of the stair bannister, "Porn stash, drug stash, pile of naked, dead, defiled girls," she rattles off with easy humor.

He leans in close, she subtly sways back a bit and it pleases him in some secret way while he intones with a dramatic whisper, "That last one."

She makes a sound in her throat, it sounds like she's amused.

"I fucking reek. I'll be back." After a shower and a quick bout of expected masturbation.

She smiles again, but it's just as subtle as the way she'd swayed back a moment ago and if she'd been looking at his mouth instead of his eyes he'd have leaned forward and kissed her after she's said, "I think you smell good, girls like it when boys are a little sweaty, you know?"

"Uh-huh, sure," he says flippantly only because she's made him nervous. He regrets it because she steps back to topple her back onto the couch.

"I'll be here," she waves him away while swinging her dainty feet back and forth, the other flip-flop drops to the floor with a muted slap as he makes his way up the stairs.

* * *

He's mixing together whey powder and milk because he plans on going for a run when his mother calls from the open back door.

"Tate."

He's wary but walks out of the house and into a mid-session acting class. It's one on one and with a older woman with ashy blonde hair and big spacey eyes, she looks like she's in the middle of a pretty good high.

"Could you come here and help?"

His mother has him read through lines for forty minutes before she releases him to his athletic activities. He's left his protein drink on the kitchen counter and it's unappetizingly warm, he only drinks half and pours the rest out down the sink.

The heat on the stretch of sidewalk he sprints down is oppressing and suffocating, he vomits a spray into the street and walks off his fatigue and sour stomach back home.

He falls onto the lawn and watches the clouds drift by. The sky is soothingly constant in its blueness. He sighs heavily and it feels good, a stretch of his burning lungs that eases them into comfort.

"She's an awful slut, that girl," his mother tells him while grinding out a Pall Mall once he's removed himself from the front lawn and returned to the backyard to fall onto a garden lounger.

To be honest he's not sure why he's gone back to her presence, he supposes it's a habit. He looking for her recognition, still, always, until something else comes along to replace it.

"Common interests," he retorts.

"Excuse me?" Her eyebrows shoot up from behind her expensively large sunglasses and then her brow furrows viciously in fury.

It's the free sample of Ritalin he scored off Kevin last practice in his system, a bonus to the joints he'd bought from him instead of Kyle, making his brain run at supersonic speeds that saves him from the slip up of opening his mouth.

"Coming in to rest?"

"To rest?" Her brow unfolds into something less substantially creased.

"It's hot out."

"Oh, no," she waves a hand that moves like old smoke, "Could you fix me a Long Island Ice Tea?"

"How much ice?"

"Half-full. Thank you. You're a good boy."

Something inside of him smiles with razor teeth. He lets the dog kenneled in the kitchen lick a few of the icecubes he puts in her drink.

* * *

The dogs kenneled downstairs are yipping violently enough to wake him up fully from his post-school day bout of passing out. There's the violent warmth in his groin and the sensation he's managed to fall asleep around telling him he really needs to piss.

There's steam pouring from the open bathroom.

It doesn't strike him as odd until he's putting a leash on the two dogs that need to piss as badly as he did that his mother had been out getting her hair done since he got home from school.

He knots the leaches to the stove handle and goes back upstairs.

The mirror is still foggy and the shower curtain is damp. He pushes up the bathroom window and peers down to the driveway that is empty.

Downstairs the dogs bark.

With a scowl he thumps down to the kitchen, steps proving his agitation.

There's a woman emptying a bucket of soapy water down the kitchen sink.

"Hey."

She's dressed in black and white and her red bangs cover one eye dramatically, when she brushes them away he can see why, it's milky white and serves as an unsettling surprise."

"You must be Tate. I'm Moira. The maid. I'm here every day except Monday and Wednesday." She fills the bucket half-way with water before placing it on the floor and pouring in a quarter bottle of lemon-scented wood cleaner.

"Oh. Yeah. I'm Tate."

She hums in an effort to let him know she's heard him, before rising up and moving around the kitchen to find the mop, "I'm usually gone by now, but it rained yesterday so I couldn't hang out the laundry."

"Oh. Uh, thanks for doing it."

"It's my job," she muses brushing by him to enter the hall with her bucket and mop.

He turns and leans on the entryway to the kitchen to watch, she's not unattractive but she's cool in the way paid help is emotionally frigid and her uniform is not the stuff out of pornographic representations of maids. She's young but still too old for him.

"Yeah, but thanks anyway. I know my mom's a bitch about some things though, with cleaning and whatever."

"Thank you. I'll be out of your way in a minute," she's already started mopping and isn't even looking at him anymore.

"It's fine I've got to walk these guys anyway."

"It was nice to meet you," she says to the floor.

"You too," he says while he passes with a small, squirming mongrel under each arm, "Oh, hey!"

"Yes?" She looks up like it's an inconvenience.

"Were you upstairs before?"

"In the bathroom?"

"Yeah."

Her head bows back down to the wet floor, "I had to scrub out the tub."

"Oh, okay. That's good, I thought we had a ghost or something."

"Maybe."

"Yeah, house is supposed to be haunted right?"

"I wouldn't know, sorry."

"Guess not."

He sidesteps a wet stripe and makes his way out the door.

* * *

It's the cancellation of track due to rain that brings him to wait for his bus in the library.

He sits down at an empty seat and crosses his ankles, slipping down against the uncomfortably upholstered back and closes his eyes, letting the background noise lull him to sleep.

There's a girlish squeak to his right.

He cracks open an eye and searches for the source half-heartedly.

The sound starts again and is followed by a clatter of what he assumes to be a couple of paperbacks off a shelf and a muttered conversation.

"Come on. _You _can afford it."

"Overcharging because my _parents_ have money is skeevy."

There's a dejected sigh, "Do you want the pills or not?"

"You gonna lower your prices?" The unseen girls question goes without a response to her question he hears her scoff, "Never mind then. I'll get it from someone else."

"Yeah, who? Kevin? Yeah, _riiiight_."

"There's other people besides you and Kevin."

"Good luck finding one."

"Whatever."

There's a surprised sound. It comes from the girl.

"There are other things, you know, if you can't afford it. Other things besides money."

The girl laughs, loudly, once, "I'm not going to _blow_ you for a handful of Hydrocodone, shit-head."

"Good luck finding someone else then."

"Thanks," a girl who looks like she has a lifetime membership to Hot Topic and a monopoly on Raccoon Eye makeup skirts around the corner of the L-M Fiction stacks, followed a full two minutes later by Westfield's resident drug dealer.

Kyle.

Tate has his eyes snapped shut and his mouth opened as if asleep by the time the other boy switches his gaze to the place where he's seated.

* * *

His hands start shaking on the bus ride home after practice. It's not the typical onslaught of paranoia that assaults him but rather the manic jitters that swatch him and swaddle him like an unruly baby, it's the precursor to the sort of spiraling rage he's been plagued by since Beau was buried.

He doesn't know what's prompted it but that the thing with it, it just happens. There's not a trigger like some people assume. It's always there. Growing gradually day by day until the mentally ill froth of it spills over the edge from mere accumulation. One crazy thought too many.

It won't be long before he sweeps dishes off the kitchen counter where they're drying just to hear them shatter and crunch against the stone kitchen tiles or throw a heavy school textbook into something for the satisfying boom that will shake the floor from it or find a suitable spot on his body to take a razor to.

He ignores it in the early evening but starving it with inattention only makes it snarl inside of him. By the time his mother has entered sleep through the doorway of a drunken stupor at eight, an early night by his account, the beastly thing in him is gnawing on the edge of his last bit of nerve to tell it to "fuck off."

It takes two maternal Valiums to soothe the inky clawed thing inside of him and make it stop trying to claw its way up his esophagus and out his mouth or lick at his brain with a length of poisonous tongue, a Lexapro from his own prescribed supply to color the world a shade less dismal, and half a joint to wade out of an impending and encroaching sense of doom.

Despite speed-lane snorting the pill medley off the back of a glossy coffee table art book, and licking off the remaining tiffany blue residue that sticks, relief is taking its time. He knows the perfect spot to tap a vein. The thought alone is as mouth-watering as a bell to a dog in Pavlov's kennels.

He makes a ceremony of it. Starts a bath and smokes up the rest of the weed he's got on hand while the pharmaceutical half of his high kicks in, following it by jerking off with flourish and lazy strokes.

When he cuts it's high enough not to be noticed from under his shorts, he's just cum but his dick throbs like an aftershock once the thin red line starts burning from the soap and heat in the water, once he can watch the water bloom with first blood, spiraling like visible wind curls or smoke from a cigarette.

He hums in agreement to a spare thought that's floating away through the bath water. It's something about cigarettes and her smoking them. _Her._

Yeah.

The way she smokes them is curled up in his blood, unfurling into the bath water.

He's got a fantasy where she unfurls into it, swells up over him so he can swell up inside of her. Like the tide or a current that can just carry him away and he'd take her with him if he went, he doesn't want to drown alone.

When he sleeps it's dreamless and when he wakes up it's in tepid water.

He pours himself into bed, damp and nude and half-high. The sheets meld to his skin like fruit skins or bubblegum film. Blearily and belatedly from his ass up sprawl on the bed he realizes that there may be someone else in his room. The paranoia has swept in like it always does. Sooner or later, but he think he smells smoke. The acrid scent of Marlboros, but the red florescence of his nightstand alarm clock tells him its 2am and his mother is still too sloshed to move and his imagination is as nightmare filled as the shadows in his closet ever were.

He reaches over to the ashtray next to his clock but finds the joint missing. He remembers that he smoked it. But he remembers that's he's wrong because the one he smoked had been inside a spiral notebook, an under the school bleachers emergency stash for the really bad days.

"Helped myself."

The cherry of it glows orange from over the edge of his bed, towards his hip. She's resting small and delicate, sitting on the floor with her elbows on the bed, her legs tucked into the space underneath.

It hurts his neck to look at her but he traces the shape of her warmed by an inhale glow lips. It's too dark to see the plume of the exhale leave her mouth and float off her tongue but he feels the warm puff of it blow across and up his ribs.

"Ugh. It's good. I'm _still_ high."

She slides closer to the head of the bed, still on the floor, like a trailing dust bunny from under the bed, her face comes closer to his still turned to stare at her in the dark.

"Open your mouth."

He can feel the wafting warmth of her tongue when she blows smoke onto his, he tries to flick his out after it but she retreats. Her eyes gleam, but his shadow covers the rest of her face, it's all just shapes, indistinct in the way dreams are, she is he knows but that doesn't really matter, "God, you are fucking beautiful."

"You're fucking high. But thanks."

"Get high with me."

"Maybe when you're awake."

"It's _my_ dream."

"Hmmm. You dream about me?"

"Tonight I am. Open your mouth."

She does and next he wants to tell her to get naked so they match because in dreams sometimes you get to do what you want, rarely and not for long but if you're quick you can have it real good for a little while but his leg twitches and kicks at air and he's thrown from the presence of his dream girl.

But then she's back, sleeping in like a gift from his subconscious. He tells her he missed her and she laughs.

She says: "I really like you Tate."

And he dumbly says that that's 'cool.'

In recompense for the inanity of the response he tells her things. Things he'd never say when she'd really be listening things he can't even think about while the sun's up.

Things about his mother, things about Addie, things about Beau, things that scare him, things that keep him up at night, things that help him fall asleep.

He doesn't know when she goes or when he stops spilling secrets but the darkness is dreamless after she's gone from it.

Until…

There's something wet trailing along the crease between thigh and groin where there's an itchy trail of flaked blood and the flavor of cum he didn't, bother to wash away.

Something traces the shape of his dick lying against his thigh, stirs him back awake, just barely, something cool and soft brushes along the expanse of skin and muscle low on his stomach and then down the inside of his thighs and he jolts up in full conscious confusion when he realizes it's how hair feels.

There's a moment of fear but he flips the sheet back and finds nothing but his own nakedness and a state of almost there arousal he flops back onto his pillows and breaths in the coolness of too early morning that's making the curtains sway. The room is shaded indigo blue and something inside of him wants to sob. He doesn't want to be alone.

* * *

**A/N:** For reference Moira when she appears in this is young Moira, as in the non-slutty young Moira, so really she's regular Moira.I think it's pretty obvious that Violet is dead. That's not the part of this story I wanted to be a mystery, how she got dead is.


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